


Little Sour Hearts

by omgericzimmermann (HMSLusitania)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Chocolate, F/M, Fake Dating, Valentine's Day, a little bit of mutual pining, holster is a disaster, so is esther, the 6k rarepair no one asked for but apparently people are positive towards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9771152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSLusitania/pseuds/omgericzimmermann
Summary: The girl is wearing a candy stripe apron, and right as Holster walks into the shop, she makes a face like she’s just taken a bite out of a lemon.“I can go,” Holster offers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! 
> 
> This had a surprisingly warm reception on Tumblr, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.

_Valentine’s Day 2013 – Freshman Year_

Holster doesn’t believe in Valentine’s Day. It’s some Hallmark Holiday based on a Christian saint of some sort, and it’s an excuse to be sickeningly sweet with someone you love, and a good day to have just dumped your significant other the night before so you can go to the single’s bars and get wasted. For Holster, it’s always been a day to gorge on chocolate. It always was in Juniors and he doesn’t see any reason to change now that he’s in college.

“What are you doing for Valentine’s Day, bro?” Ransom asks, buttoning one of his nice shirts and holding up a couple different ties to judge their relative colour.

“Being bitter,” Holster says. “What are you doing?”

“Girl from my bio class,” Ransom replies.

Holster doesn’t roll his eyes because Ransom is his best bro, and Holster loves him to death, but he feels the eyeroll. He feels it on the inside.

“Yeah, have fun,” Holster says, rolling off Ransom’s roommate’s bed and grabbing his wallet. “I’m gonna go buy a lot of chocolate.”

“You have fun too,” Ransom says, although he seems a little concerned that this is Holster’s choice of activity.

Holster wanders into the centre of Samwell, kicking aside snowdrifts that try to touch him, and eventually alights upon an old-school style candy counter.

There’s only one other person in the shop, and it’s the shop girl. She has her curly brown hair up in a ponytail, she has heavy glasses, she does not look like a supermodel. Meanly, Holster thinks he understands why she’s the one to be working on Valentine’s Day, and then remembers he doesn’t even have the excuse of working.

The girl is wearing a candy stripe apron, and right as Holster walks into the shop, she makes a face like she’s just taken a bite out of a lemon.

“I can go,” Holster offers.

“Oh, no, I just ate one of the--” she points vaguely at one of the jars of candy. Holster sees they’re the small pink, red, and white candies in the shape of fake hearts. _Little Sour Hearts_ , the sign on them reads.

“They’re really that sour?” Holster asks, inspecting the tiny hearts. They’re each a fraction of his fingernail width.

“Try one,” the girl says, opening the jar and offering him a pink one.

Holster has nothing better to do with his day, and he takes it.

It burns his tongue like it’s constructed out of concentrated Sour Patch Kid sour powder and he coughs and splutters and then eventually manages to swallow the offending heart. The girl behind the counter is cackling with laughter, and the resulting smile has lit up her round face and popped out an almost adorable set of dimples.

“Do you want a coffee?” she asks, nodding at the espresso machine. “We’ve got a couple Valentine’s specials. Pink Chocolate Mochas, Strawberry Hot Chocolate that tastes like it’s supposed to taste like a chocolate dipped strawberry, Red Velvet Lattes. The best one is the rose crème though.”

Holster notices the espresso machine, and the coffee order board, and the old fashioned bar with a long counter top and delicate barstools.

“I’ll take a rose crème,” Holster says, because the only other thing he was planning on doing with his night was hate-watching the back half of the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica.

The girl behind the counter smiles again, with the dimples, and starts the espresso machine. The drink she eventually hands him is frothy and pink, and on the saucer are two chocolate dusted pink roses made out of some form of sugar Holster doesn’t understand.

“So do you go to Samwell?” the girl asks, cleaning the espresso machine and straightening the jars of chocolates on the back wall.

“Yeah,” Holster says. “I’m a freshman.”

She freezes on her stepping stool – he thinks she’s maybe 5’3” – and then slowly turns to face him. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses, and she scans him in disbelief.

“ _You’re_ a freshman,” she says.

“I got a late start,” Holster admits, and then realises people typically do not interpret that statement as a “I got a late start because I was playing professional hockey and had been since the age of sixteen and I technically belong to the Seattle Schooners and will be moving there as soon as I graduate because I just deferred my draft contract” and instead interpret it as “something went horribly wrong and this boy is stupid.”

The girl is still staring at him in shock, though, so he thinks he might have time to explain himself.

“I was playing in Juniors for hockey,” he says. And no, he realises, that doesn’t make him sound smarter. “I got drafted into the NHL and deferred so that I could go to school.”

“Oh,” the girl says. “Hockey.”

“Not a fan?” Holster asks.

The girl shrugs. “I’ve never been to a game or anything.”

Before Holster knows what he’s saying, he’s suggesting she come to one of their games. She’s a freshman too, he learns, but a real one, not like him.

Their conversation is interrupted a few moments later by a panicked looking man running into the shop, shouting at the girl until she gives him a lot of dark chocolate, shouting at her when she tells him the price, and then just. Shouting.

Holster sees the girl’s face set, but he can’t tell if she’s upset like she’s gonna cry or upset like she’s going to jump the counter and punch the customer in the face.

“Hey man,” Holster says, standing up and leaning against the front counter with his arms crossed.

The angry customer – red in the face from his shouting – attempts to level Holster with a look, but his eye level is the same as Holster’s crossed arms, and while he lets his eyes move upwards to Holster’s face, the blood drains very visibly from his skin.

“Hey there,” Holster says. The man gulps. Holster turns to the girl. “What’s his total?”

“Twenty dollars and fifty-eight cents,” she says.

Holster plucks the man’s wallet out of his hands, takes out $25, then hands him his wallet and chocolate and steers him out the door. The girl is blinking at him in shock.

“I’m not allowed to tell people to calm the fuck down while I’m on the clock,” she says finally. “So thanks. But you took too much of his money.”

Holster shrugs and stuffs the change into the tip jar.

“I’m Adam, by the way,” Holster says, extending his hand across the counter.

She smiles and shakes his hand. “I’m Esther.”

* * *

 

Holster doesn’t think about Esther again for a while. Not until he sees her again, in fact, which happens to be two months later when his parents show up unannounced and make him go to worship with them at the synagogue he hasn’t even breathed towards since coming to Samwell. Something about spending his teenage years in Iowa choked all the religion out of him.

He sits as patiently as he can while they’re there, and is relieved when his parents say they’ll go out to brunch afterwards. Holster recommends Jerry’s because where else does one brunch in Samwell, and as they’re leaving the building, he collides with a small woman. The top of her head comes up to his sternum, and he’s fairly certain she’s a hobbit.

“Oh my god, Mom, are you okay?” a girl asks from the other side of the hobbit woman. Holster looks up in disbelief. It’s Esther.

From their nice clothes, it’s clear Esther and her family have also just been in the synagogue.

“Adam?” Esther asks in disbelief as her mother steps back from Holster’s chest and stares up at him.

“You are a very well built young man,” she informs him, her eyes wide. “Very well.”

“Mom,” Esther complains, her face turning a little pink.

She’s wearing makeup. Not a lot, but just enough eyeliner to make the green hues in her hazel eyes pop. Holster catches himself staring and then looks away.

Esther is the same height as her mother, he realises. She is a hobbit person.

“Can’t take him anywhere,” Holster’s dad booms, clapping him on the shoulder and holding out his hand for Esther’s mom to shake. “Son, I’ve told you! No checking people off the ice.”

“That’s a hockey thing, right?” Esther asks.

“Yeah,” Adam says.

“Wait do you two know each other?” Esther’s mom asks, her eyes going wide while she stares between her daughter and the imposing wall that is Holster’s chest. Holster wonders if she’s not looking higher because she’s afraid of hurting her neck looking up.

“Sort of,” Holster says. Esther nods in agreement.

“I was just saying to Esther she has to get out and make more friends,” Esther’s mother says, gripping Holster’s dad by the elbow. “Are you folks local?”

“Nah, we’re up in Buffalo,” Holster’s dad says. “You?”

“Rochester,” Esther’s mom replies.

Holster meets Esther’s eyes and finds the same slightly baffled and excessively steamrolled expression that he’s wearing on her face. He can’t say it’s a true surprise when both the Birkholtzes and the Shapiros end up in Jerry’s together, sharing a booth. Leah Shapiro and David Birkholtz own the conversation while Holster and Esther make dismayed faces at each other across the table and Holster’s mom and Esther’s dad look equally resigned to their fates as though this is a common occurrence for them.

As a means of escape, Holster offers to walk back to the dorms with Esther so that he doesn’t have to hear his parents encouraging him to date her, as he knows they will. The more gregarious halves of their parenting crews are deeply enthusiastic about this suggestion, and practically force them out the door.

“Your dad is…a lot,” Esther says while they walk across the river. Samwell in April is a beautiful time and Holster’s happy to be there rather than Iowa. He’s happy to be there over upstate New York as well, frankly. He hopes Seattle is going to be better.

“Yeah,” Holster agrees, taking off his tie and stuffing it, wrinkled into his pocket.

“So is the hockey season still going?” Esther asks.

“Just finals,” Holster says with a shrug. “We got knocked out first round of playoffs. I thought our captain was going to drown himself in the pond.”

Esther snorts. She doesn’t play any sports, he discovers. She doesn’t associate with anyone who could remotely be considered a jock, after a high school career of being teased for her bookishness and an overt fondness for sweets that had led to a rounder figure than most would consider socially acceptable.

“I’m going to make truffles,” she tells him as they walk into the dormitory building where they apparently both live.

“Chocolate, not mushroom, right?” Holster asks.

“Yes, Adam, I’m going to manufacture mushrooms in my basement, and then sell the truffles to restaurants and the truffle oils to suppliers, and everyone will be after my secret and I’ll never get a moment’s peace in my entire life,” she says, raising her eyebrows at him. “Of course chocolate.”

Holster feels himself blush this time, and is glad when she starts laughing.

“I steal the student kitchen on the third floor on Sunday mornings to test recipes if you don’t have anything better to do,” she says, and then she disappears up the stairs to whichever floor it is she lives on, and Holster wanders back to his own room, still feeling a little baffled and steamrolled.

He goes down on Sunday morning, and finds Esther in the kitchens making truffles. She’s covered in chocolate from her elbows to her wrists, and her worn out old apron is completely slathered. She’s wearing a _Firefly_ t-shirt and in the space of time between him walking into the kitchen and Esther noticing him, he comes to the inescapable conclusion he has a little bit of a crush on her.

School will be out in a few weeks, and he just got dibs for real for the Haus, and he and Rans will be sharing the attic. He and Esther met by complete coincidence, and he’s struck by the fact he will probably never talk to her again, and it almost makes him sad. It’s not a real sadness, more like a regret for lost potential than anything else. But for that Sunday, he sits there, leaning against the counter while she makes truffles and feeds them to him every so often, and he thinks, “this is nice.”

* * *

 

Unbelievably, it isn’t the end.

Classes finish for the summer, he and Rans move all their collective shit into the attic and go out for best friend sundaes and then they road trip north. They spend a few days together at Niagara Falls, and then part ways. Holster has spent maybe a month in his childhood bedroom since he was sixteen, and it feels weird to be back there. It’s even weirder when his mom comes into his room without knocking and perches on the edge of his bed while he dicks around on his computer.

“So,” she says.

“So?” Holster echoes.

“How’s Esther?” she asks.

“I’m pretty sure she’s fine,” Holster says. “Why?”

“Why didn’t you bring her up to Niagara Falls with you and Justin?” his mom asks.

Holster stares at her for a minute, and is briefly distracted by the fact Sarah got their mom’s everything down to the last freckle and it’s kinda disturbing, and then he blinks. His mother thinks he and Esther are dating.

Well fuck.

“She was, uh, she had a thing,” Holster says. He is so, so fucked.

Well at least his parents aren’t on Facebook.

“Hmm,” his mom hums like she doesn’t believe him. “Well if she wants to visit this summer she’s more than welcome.”

Holster nods, thanks her, and then waits anxiously for her to leave. He feels like Ransom, and if this is what Ransom’s anxiety feels like even 30% of the time, he needs to figure out a better way to help.

Finally, after what seems like an eon of his mom standing in his doorway and staring at the old pinup posters of Gretzky and Bad Bob and the original cast of Beauty and the Beast, she leaves.

Holster dives for Facebook, and desperately searches Esther’s name. Her profile pic is about what he’d expect, since it’s a picture of her meeting Nathan Fillion, and he sends her a friend request immediately. To his relief, she accepts it within five minutes, and he opens a message chat.

He can be cool about this. He can be suave. He knows how to talk to girls, mostly – okay well he’s not Rans, but he does okay, sort of. Sometimes. And, well, generally he’s fucked.

_Adam B: Hey so this is gonna sound weird but apparently my parents got the idea we were dating??_

_Esther S: …_

_Esther S: uh that is weird_

_Adam B: right?_

_Esther S: mine did too_

_Adam B: wait really?_

_Esther S: yup_

_Adam B: so how screwed are we?_

_Esther S: well we’re not since we’re not actually dating_

Holster has to retreat from the computer for a moment to stop himself from replying with something crude. When he returns to the chat, he finds himself writing about how his parents have always been worried he’d end up married to hockey, and how they’d met in college and ended up married almost as soon as they graduated, and how they’re disappointed in the fact he’s more or less a frat boy. Esther returns that she’s got to deal with her parents being constantly worried she’ll never speak to anyone, and never have friends, and end up alone in a truffle shop.

And they hatch a plan.

Holster likes being partners in crime with Esther. She’s nerdier than any of his friends on the team, and when she comes to visit that summer, his freakishly tall blonde sisters don’t intimidate her like they do most mortals, and Esther even lets them decorate her. His sisters use the word “makeover” of course, but Esther says “decorate” and Holster thinks it’s a better description. They stay up late watching reruns of Buffy, and when Holster falls asleep on her, it’s not awkward in the morning because they’re friends.

They get back to Samwell, and go their separate ways, springing back together like mercury on occasions where their families might show up. They keep in contact though. Holster makes a point of inviting her to all their kegsters at the Haus, and steals her a piece of the frog Bitty’s pie because it’s magically delicious. Esther never comes to the kegsters because they are not her scene, and he understands that from an objective standpoint.

At least she doesn’t, until the first kegster after Thanksgiving, when she does.

Holster almost doesn’t recognise her when she walks into the Haus looking somewhat amused and also disgusted by her surroundings. She’s with a group of girls he thinks are from the soccer team, and one girl in particular seems to be Esther’s bridge to this world of frat parties. Holster is fairly certain she’s the one responsible for Esther’s hair being straightened and put up, and she’s got to be the one responsible for Esther wearing a dress and a lot of makeup. She looks pretty, but in a incongruous way, the way people look nice when they follow the latest fashion trends to a T even though those trends aren’t really the right ones for them personally. Like sure, they match everyone, so they look just fine, but anything unique about their appearance has been smothered by a few layers of the eyeshadow du jour and the cut of the dress is the one in all the magazines but it’s not the cut that’s best for their frame.

“You’re Kate, right?” Ransom asks, sidling up to the soccer girl who has her hand on Esther’s elbow like she’s both afraid she’ll run away and afraid something will happen to her if Kate is not watchful.

“Oluransi?” Kate replies, squinting like she’s trying to remember. Holster continues to stare, somewhat dumbfounded, at Esther.

“Yeah yeah,” Ransom agrees. “You dated Jack, right?”

Holster’s curiosity is now piqued. How in god’s name did one of Jack’s ex-girlfriends get Esther to go to a frat party.

“As much as anyone dates Jack Zimmermann,” Kate replies, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, this is my friend Esther from my business class. She’s never been to a party like this before. Are either of you trustworthy?”

Ransom is looking at Kate like he wants to know her better, in a “I want to understand how you managed to get Jack Zimmermann to stop breathing hockey enough to have sex with you” sort of way, and is not paying attention to what Kate is saying about Esther at all.

Esther, on the other hand, is looking at Holster like he might be convinced to save her.

“I’ll look out for her,” Holster offers. He wasn’t really looking to hook up that night anyway. At least, not in any active sort of way. Not in a “I have a target and a goal” sort of way, just in a “if it happens that’d be sweet” sort of way.

“Thanks,” Kate says, foisting Esther on him and then letting Ransom show her to the tub juice. Once they’re gone, Holster looks down at Esther.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he asks.

“Oh, that reminds me we should get a selfie for our parents,” she says, grabbing her phone and tugging him down so their faces will both fit in the frame.

Holster manages to smile obligingly and then returns to the question at hand.

“No but seriously,” he says. “Why are you at a frat party?”

He’s trying not to be hurt she apparently showed up when Kate invited her, but never when he’s invited her.

“Kate and I did a group project together and then we were talking about our weekend plans and I think she took pity on me or something,” Esther says. “Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

She looks around the kegster room of the Haus, and alights on Bitty twerking with Shitty and Holster interprets the expression on her face as one of “what the fuck am I doing here?”

“You want a drink?” he asks.

“Oh dear god yes,” she replies, following him to the kitchen.

Holster plies both her and then himself with some liquor and tries to convince her to dance. It doesn’t work until they’re a few more drinks into the night, and then, inconveniently, his pants start getting a little tight. He hopes she doesn’t notice, but from the sort of evil gleam in her eye, she does.

“So which room is yours?” she asks, all casual, if a little drunkenly.

“It’s upstairs,” Holster says, feeling nervous about it. He’s brought…well, a lot of girls up to his room before, and never cared one way or the other what they thought of his living space because a physically awkward pubescence had led to a certain generosity and gratitude in bed as a way of compensating so usually it didn’t matter. But since he wasn’t going to be having sex with Esther, no matter what his groin was attempting to persuade him to do at that moment, he wouldn’t have any way of covering the fact he and Rans pretty much lived in squalor.

“Is it colder up there than it is down here?” Esther asks.

“Yeah,” Holster says. “It’s an attic in November.”

Esther nods, and then drags him towards the stairs. Holster catches Ransom’s eye by accident on their way up, and Rans throws him a mock salute, and then returns his attentions to Kate.

Esther doesn’t seem to judge the attic the way most thinking people would, and sits down on the bottom bunk fanning her red face.

“Why is it so cold up here and so warm down there?” Esther asks, kicking off her high heels and tucking her feet under Holster’s comforter.

“The heater doesn’t work so we just pack everyone in downstairs instead,” Holster says, grabbing one of the gallon jugs of water from the closet and opening it. He takes a healthy drink of it and passes it to Esther.

She giggles at his explanation, probably because she’s drunk not because he’s funny, and takes the water.

“I think you’re trying to make that a joke but I’m also pretty sure it’s true,” she says while he sits on the floor next to her knees. His bunkbed is too short for him to sit up on it without banging his head on the bottom of Ransom’s bunk.

He laughs and takes the water back when she hands it to him.

“It’s weird having you here,” he says without thinking about it.

“Why? Worried I’m gonna tell all your cool jock friends you occasionally play D&D?” Esther asks.

Holster doesn’t know how to articulate that it’s actually because he’s worried his “cool jock friends”, who are in reality the biggest dweebs on the fucking planet, are going to expose him as being some kind of shallow cad who would never think of a short, curvy, _nerdy_ girl like Esther as anything more than one-off hook up material.

Which leads him to the bigger problem.

Holster _likes_ Esther. And he doesn’t want her to think of him the way the others probably see him.

“Nah, they wouldn’t be surprised,” he says instead, leaning back against the bed. She peers down at him. “Mostly I’m worried one of them is gonna be a complete fuck up and offend the shit out of you and you’ll never talk to me again.”

Which is more than he meant to say, but it’s out now.

She leans over and pats him on the face. Despite the alcohol and the overheated atmosphere they’ve just left, her fingers are cold against his skin.

“I like this being taller than you thing,” she says, wrinkling her nose and looking down at him. He’s pretty sure if she keeps leaning over like that her boobs are going to fall out of her dress.

“I don’t, people aren’t supposed to be taller than me,” he says with a pretend pout.

“I’m not sitting on your floor to make you feel better,” she says. “Who knows what’s been on that.”

It’s out of his mouth before Holster really knows what he’s saying, and the part of his brain that isn’t a drunken idiot is trying to strangle the drunk one.

Because what he says is, “You could just sit on me,” and Esther’s face goes blank.

Finally she laughs, but it’s awkward, and the whole attic is awkward now, and he walks her back to her dorm a few minutes later and she doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t say anything and he knows he’s crossed a line but he’s not exactly sure where.

Things still aren’t better a week later when Rans announces their Winter Screw dates.

“You’re screwing me with Esther Shapiro? Bro!” Holster demands, panic rising in his chest.

“What the fuck, Holster, you guys hooked up last weekend,” Ransom says.

And what’s Holster supposed to say? That he and Esther sat in the attic together for an hour and then he walked her home and the closest they actually got to hooking up was him making a stupid suggestion and her laughing at him?

“And you chirped me for like 72 hours afterwards, remember?” Holster reminds him, because that had happened too. Rans had given him so much shit for hooking up with Kate’s pity-invite friend, without knowing any of the truth of the matter, and now Holster is so screwed.

“Oh fuck! Wasn’t she the chick with the rash shaped like Ellen Degeneres?” Shitty asks.

“No, I think she was the one with the eyepatch,” Jack says. “Right Holster?”

 _Why is it weird for me to be here?_ Esther had asked.

“Because my friends are fucking assholes,” is what Holster should’ve said.

But really, how bad can it get?

* * *

 

== **Esther==**

 **Esther** : uh so Kate just told me she and my roommate conspired with Ransom/Justin/your roommate for Winter Screw?

 **Esther** : is that actually a thing?

 **Me** : it is. Rans just told me

 **Esther** : do you want me to tell them to fuck off and that I’m not going?

 **Me** : I’d rather go with you than anyone else they might try to set me up with. The girl they sent me with last year was

 **Me** : It was bad, let’s just leave it there.

 **Esther** : did she puke on you?

 **Me** : on my bed actually.

 **Esther** : that blows.

 **Esther** : Fine. See you on Friday.

==

Holster wasn’t lying. He would rather go with Esther than anyone else, but he feels the need to protect her from his asshole friends, and doesn’t know how to tell them that.

He and Rans have a tussle over wardrobe choices, and it ends with Holster lobbing Ransom’s salmon shorts out the window and Ransom shrieking in despair, but Holster wins the rights to the purple tie that lives in their closet and the matching pocket square.

Bitty seems both delighted by the whole concept of Winter Screw and also like he might throw up from nerves considering the rugby boy they’ve set him up with. All their dates are converging on the Haus beforehand, even Bitty’s since Shitty’s helping him dress. At least, that was the official story, but seeing how Shitty looks well-groomed when they assemble downstairs makes it fairly clear Bitty was helping Shitty dress instead.

“Good choice,” Johnson says, patting Holster’s tie while his girlfriend helps him with his own pocket square.

“Thanks?” Holster says, because he’s never entirely sure the things Johnson says are a compliment.

Aside from Johnson’s girlfriend, Jack’s date shows up first. Camilla Collins, star of the tennis team, is intimidatingly hot, kinda like Jack, so Holster thinks he and Rans have done good work there. Camilla eyes Jack with an appraising look, and seems to find him adequate. Bitty’s date is next and Rugby Boy looks at Bitty like he wants to eat him up which makes Holster’s protective instincts flare up, but Bitty doesn’t even notice because he’s staring at Camilla. Holster understands. Even if he was fully gay rather than just bi, he’d still stare at Camilla.

Shitty doesn’t have a date, what with Lardo not being back from Kenya, so they’re just waiting on Esther and Kate.

They show up together, and Holster’s pretty sure his heart stops beating for a second.

The point of Winter Screw is to look easy and be easier, but Esther missed the memo and Holster has never been more grateful for her apparent lack of caring about conventions like that. Based on his musical theatre background, he’s pretty sure her dress would be best suited to the 1950s, like something that might be in _Grease_ , but it looks amazing on her and suits her so well. Oddly enough, it’s the same purple as Holster’s tie, and Johnson winks at him when he notices this.

Their dates arrived, it’s time to head for the student centre and the dance. Despite Camilla’s intimidating hotness, everyone is looking at Esther instead. Holster is fairly certain it’s not because there’s more fabric to her dress than anyone else’s. It’s because she looks amazing.

“You look great,” Holster says as they walk into the student centre.

Esther scoffs. “Thanks,” she says, accepting Shitty’s flask of alcohol as he passes it around. Holster frowns at her but takes the flask.

“No, I mean it,” Holster insists once he’s passed the flask to Bitty. Esther raises her eyebrows at him.

“You don’t have to,” Esther says. “I get it. I get what kinds of girls you guys date, Adam. You don’t have to pretend to think of me as anything other than your friend.”

Holster doesn’t know how to respond to that, but she brightens artificially and drags him off to the dance floor. Unlike everyone except Bitty, they don’t go home together, and Holster spends the night of Winter Screw playing Mario Kart with Shitty.

He gets home to Buffalo for winter break and obligingly shows his mom the pictures of him and Esther from Winter Screw, and then goes and wallows in his room.

== **Esther ==**

 **Me:** you did look really pretty at Winter Screw

 **Esther:** please stop

 **Me:** sorry

==

Holster isn’t entirely sure what he’s done, and so he doesn’t know how to stop exactly except by not talking to her. And so he doesn’t. Not for months.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

_Valentine’s Day 2014 – Sophomore Year_

“Got plans?” Ransom asks, putting on cologne in front of their mirror and checking his jaw for blemishes. There are none, because Ransom is flawless and Holster hates him for it just a little.

“Does drinking alone count?” Holster asks, taking another sip of his beer.

Ransom gives him a disapproving look.

“Call up that Esther chick or something,” Ransom suggests, casually like it doesn’t make Holster’s insides burn. “Just find some way to get laid rather than moping around here. For me, please.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Holster snaps. Something in his tone makes Ransom stop preparing for his date, and instead turn to look at Holster. And then Holster finds himself spilling the whole story. Everything about meeting Esther, and his parents, and _her_ parents, and the summer and what had actually happened at Winter Screw.

Ransom stares at him for a long time after he’s finished talking and then claps him on the shoulder.

“Holtzy, man, I love you, you know this, but you’re a fucking idiot,” Ransom says.

“Yeah, I know,” Holster says.

“She still works at the candy shop, right?” Ransom asks. Holster nods. Ransom nods back and then forces the bouquet of flowers he’d intended to give to his own date into Holster’s hands.

“I can’t take these,” he says. “You need them.”

“Bro, I’ma just tell her this entire story and I will get mad laid,” Ransom replies. “You need the flowers more than I do.”

Holster can’t argue with him there, and he heads off for the candy shop in Samwell’s centre. He doesn’t even know if she’s working tonight, he realises, but luck is with him and when he walks into the candy shop, she straightens up from behind the counter where she was refilling chocolate covered espresso beans. Her customer service smile dims when she sees him.

“Hey,” she says, because it is a very small shop and it would be weirder if she said nothing.

“Hey,” he replies, now feeling very stupid. “I, um, I brought you flowers.”

Her eyebrows lift over her glasses and he realises it’s genuine surprise. Like she thought he was walking into the candy shop where she works to buy chocolate for whoever the recipient of the flowers happened to be.

“Why?” she asks, taking them over the glass counter anyway.

“As an apology?” Holster says, because now he’s not sure either.

“Do you even know why you’re apologising?” she asks, setting the flowers behind the counter and opening a jar. She grabs a handful of something, puts it on the scale to weigh it out, and then hands them to Holster. He pops them in his mouth without looking, sort of on autopilot, and sputters in horror immediately because it was a handful of the Little Sour Hearts and he feels like his tongue is going to melt off.

“Not really,” he gasps, sure he’s making the absolute worst face he’s ever made.

“It was for pitying me,” she says, giving him a cold look while his tongue burns. “For trying to pretend I was just as pretty as Kate and Jane and Camilla. I know I’m not, okay? I get it. You don’t have to lie to me about it and then keep bringing it up especially since we’re just friends. Or I thought we were and then you stopped talking to me.”

Holster has a brief moment of wondering who Jane is but realises it has to be Johnson’s girlfriend. He thinks he remembers something about that. Her name’s Jane Deer or something. Fawn. Doe. He can’t remember right.

“I wasn’t pitying you!” Holster insists. The burning has moved to his throat now. “You looked pretty. You looked really pretty. And I’ve had a crush on you since the day you let me hang out while you made truffles so--”

He’s cut off by the sound of the espresso machine whirring to life. Esther is pink in the face and it’s spreading down her neck and shoulders. He feels like he’s fifteen again trying to get Jenny Simmons to go to homecoming with him by telling her he has a crush on her. He’s almost 23, is he really allowed to use the word “crush” anymore?

The espresso machine shuts off, but Esther is no less pink in the face while she pushes a frothy pink beverage onto the bar. Tentatively, Holster sits, unsure if he’s still in trouble. She’s put the little rose shaped candies on the saucer and Holster bites into one, letting it dissolve on his tongue and wash away some of the burning from the sour hearts.

“I just thought I should tell you,” he says, taking a sip of the rose crème. Esther’s blush brightens to a full red.

“You’re a dork,” she informs him.

“Can we be friends again?” Holster asks.

“Maybe,” she says, looking down at the counter top and wiping it with a cloth.

“Just maybe?” Holster asks, trying not to seem overly sad about it.

“I kinda have a crush on you too,” she says, still looking down.

Holster feels his insides light up. “Really?” he asks.

Her head snaps up and she glares at him. “You’re all--”

She doesn’t appear to have a word for what he is and instead flails her hands at him like she’s trying to define a nebulous concept.

“So maybe we could be more than friends?” Holster suggests.

Esther rolls her eyes and grabs her step stool. She uses it to lean across the bar and grab him by the sweatshirt strings. He likes kissing her. He likes it even when their glasses clack together, and even when they have to break apart because a customer has just walked in.

Unbelievably, it’s the man from Valentine’s Day the previous year, looking like he’s in as much of a tizzy as he was the year before. He seems to recognise both Holster and Esther, and instead of shrieking at her like a deranged eel, he very politely and quietly requests a mixed box of fancy chocolates for his husband, and leaves a five dollar tip.

Esther doesn’t appear to have registered that it’s the same man, because Holster has to point it out.

“That was the guy from last year,” he says.

Esther snorts, and then bursts out laughing, and then she leans across the counter to kiss him again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can come cry with me on [tumblr.](http://omgericzimmermann.tumblr.com)


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